“Who’s he?”
“His wife, Agnes, drives Lucy’s school bus. We spent quite a while with him. Somehow or other he found out we were in town and insisted on talking to us. He doesn’t know Lucy Ridder personally, but claims his wife does. He says Lucy Ridder sounds like a weird kid. He’s afraid she’s going to show up at school with a gun and mow down everybody in sight. After we talked to Wayne, we tracked his wife down at the school district bus garage. Her take on the situation is a little different from her husband’s. She says Lucy’s never been any problem-that Wayne is pushing panic buttons for no reason. Agnes did say, though, that on Friday afternoon on the bus, Lucy Ridder looked unhappier than usual. Like she was upset. Like she didn’t want to get off the bus to go home.”
Joanna thought about that for a minute, trying to remember exactly what Catherine Yates had said about Sandra Ridder’s release from prison and her expected homecoming.
“I’m pretty sure Catherine Yates told us that she had just heard on Friday afternoon that her daughter was being released from Perryville. But if Lucy was more upset than usual on Friday afternoon and if what was upsetting her was the unwelcome prospect of her mother’s homecoming, then how did she know about it before she got off the school bus?”
“Good question,” Jaime Carbajal said. “Maybe Catherine Yates called the school and told her so.”
“That’s one possibility,” Joanna agreed. “But since Catherine knew all about Lucy’s negative attitude toward her mother, I doubt it. No, I think Lucy herself had some kind of advance notice-probably from Sandra herself.”
“You’re saying maybe Lucy knew about her mother’s upcoming release before Catherine Yates did?”
“Maybe,” Joanna said. “Speaking of Catherine Yates, did she give you any more helpful information about either Sandra or Lucy?”
“Some, but not very much. According to Catherine, compared to her mother, Lucy’s a peach. She said Sandy was a headstrong handful from the day she was born. By the time she hit junior high, she was in so much trouble that she spent several months in juvie. We don’t know why she was sent up because the record was expunged once she turned eighteen.
“Then, in high school, Sandra more or less got her head screwed on straight. She started staying out of trouble and hitting the books. Since her father was an Anglo, she’s not a full-blooded Apache, but she had enough Native American blood to win a BIA scholarship to the University of Arizona, where she majored in Business and Native American studies. She didn’t graduate, though. Her senior year she got hooked up with a radical group called NAT-C.”
“You mean like Hitler Youth?” Joanna asked.
“No, something called the Native American Tribal Council-NAT-C for short.”
“That’s an unfortunate acronym,” Joanna murmured.
Jaime laughed. “Isn’t it, though! NAT-C is made up of Indian radicals and wannabe Indian radicals from all over the country who take the position that the Indian wars never ended. Once Sandra got involved with the group, she quit school and hit the road with them doing demonstrations, picketing, that kind of thing.”
“Is that where she met her husband?”
“No. They met later. By then, Sandra had given up demonstrating and had gone to work at Fort Huachuca. That’s where she and Tom Ridder met-working on post. She was civil service, and he was career army-a staff sergeant.”
“Was Tom Ridder a Native American?”
“Evidently not. When Tom got pushed out of the service, Sandra stayed on working at the fort. They rented a house in Tucson. She carpooled back and forth to Fort Huachuca, and Tom started a Tucson-based landscaping business.”
“That’s what he was doing at the time he was killed, running a landscaping business?” Joanna asked.
“That’s right.”
“But didn’t you say just a few minutes ago that he was a staff sergeant in the army?”
“Right again,” Jaime said.
“Going from staff sergeant to running a landscaping outfit is a pretty big step down,” Joanna observed.
“That’s what I thought, too. According to what Catherine Yates told us, one way or another, Tom Ridder got himself crosswise of his commanding officer. He left the army with a general discharge. I would expect that having one of those on your record puts a damper on potential career opportunities.”
“Did Catherine give you any details on that, on what caused Tom Ridder to be booted out of the service?”
“No. We asked. If she knew, she wasn’t talking.”
“We should probably find out.”
“Right. Ernie Carpenter has some fairly good connections out at Fort Huachuca. He’ll take a crack at finding out those details; if not today, then first thing tomorrow for sure.”
“Good work, Jaime,” Joanna told him. “You two keep after it.”
Once across the divide and out in the wide valley between the Mule Mountains and Tombstone, Joanna tried calling Kristin. It was only fair to let her secretary know that her lunch date in Bisbee had turned into an afternoon drive to Tucson. Unfortunately, Kristin was away from her desk. Several minutes later, Joanna’s phone chirped its distinctive rooster-crow ring. The cell phone’s caller ID readout told her Frank Montoya was on the line.
“Hello,” she said. “What’s up?”
“I traced that phone number for you,” he said. “The U.S. West phone logs say it’s a pay phone, all right, but not at a truck stop. The calls were made from that I-Ten rest area in Texas Canyon east of Benson.”
“As the crow flies, that’s only about fifteen miles or so from Catherine Yates’ place,” Joanna observed. “Less than that from Cochise Stronghold. But did I hear you to say calls? As in plural?”
“That’s right,” Frank said. “There are three different calls on that phone, all made within a few minutes of three a.m. Saturday morning. All of them went to different numbers in the Tucson area. The first one, at three straight up and down, is the one placed to your friend Mrs. Quick. That one lasted about six minutes. You’ll never guess where the next one went.”
“Where?”
“At three ten the log shows a call to one M. Goodson out on Old Spanish Trail.”
“That has to be Melanie Goodson,” Joanna repeated. “Sandra Ridder’s old defense attorney, and the place where Sandra was supposed to be spending the night Saturday night. Is there a chance Lucy was calling there looking for her mother?”
“Could be. Or maybe she had reason to believe that she would soon be in need of a capable defense attorney, although Melanie Goodson hasn’t worked as a public defender in years. Whatever the reason for the call, my guess is Lucy didn’t connect with anyone in person. The call lasted for just over thirty seconds.”
“Long enough to be picked up by an answering machine?” Joanna asked.
“Sounds like. The last call was placed at three-fifteen. That one went to a Catholic convent at Santa Theresa School in the twenty-four hundred block of South Sixth Avenue in South Tucson. Somebody took that one because the call lasted a full fifteen minutes.”
“So there, at least, Lucy must have made contact with whoever it was she was looking for. What’s that address again?”
Frank gave it to her, and Joanna jotted it on her dash-mounted message pad.
“It just so happens that I’m on my way to Tucson right now to see Jay Quick,” Joanna told Frank. “If I finish up with him in time, I may stop by the convent and see if I can find out who it was Lucy was calling so early in the morning.”
“Anything else you want me to do on this end?” Frank asked.